WordPress, CodeIgniter, legacy PHP, migrated to modern Laravel.
Replatform your existing application to Laravel without losing data, SEO, or sleep. We have shipped 100 plus production migrations from WordPress, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, classic ASP, ColdFusion, and legacy PHP, with zero data loss and near zero unplanned downtime.
- Zero data loss as a fixed requirement, not a best effort
- Near zero downtime cutover through the strangler fig pattern
- 301 redirect mapping for every URL, SEO equity preserved
- Password hashes migrated correctly, no forced customer resets
The replatform that pays for itself in year two.
Laravel migration, in plain terms.
Laravel migration is the process of moving an existing application from its current framework or platform (WordPress, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, classic ASP, ColdFusion, legacy PHP, or older Magento) onto modern Laravel. The goal is not "the same thing, just newer". The goal is to land on a platform where new features ship in days instead of weeks, security patches are routine instead of risky, hiring developers is easy, and the technical debt finally stops compounding.
We have shipped 100 plus production migrations since 2007. WordPress applications becoming proper Laravel platforms, CodeIgniter codebases modernised without rewrites, eCommerce stores moving from Magento to Bagisto, and legacy PHP applications restructured around clean architecture. Every migration we deliver carries a zero data loss requirement and a complete 301 redirect plan to preserve SEO equity.
Signals the cost of staying is now higher than the cost of moving.
Migration is expensive. Staying on the wrong platform is often more expensive. If three or more of these apply, the math has already tipped.
Development time per feature has doubled in the last twelve months without scope getting harder. Your hosting bill keeps growing without traffic growing. Security patches are skipped because the codebase is fragile. Hiring developers is harder every quarter because the stack is outdated. The existing platform cannot model new business rules without ten plugins held together by hope. Your security or compliance team is escalating risk on every audit. You are paying $5,000 plus per month in SaaS or licence fees for capability you could own outright in Laravel.
Four common migration paths, all in one team.
The approach changes with the source platform, codebase size, and business risk. We pick the right migration strategy on each engagement instead of forcing one template across every project.
WordPress to Laravel
For sites that have outgrown the plugin ecosystem. We rebuild as a proper Laravel application, migrate content and users, set up 301 redirects for every WordPress URL, and preserve SEO rankings. Most WordPress migrations land in 6 to 12 weeks.
Common reasons clients migrate
- Plugin conflicts causing weekly production incidents
- Custom features blocked by the plugin architecture
- Hosting cost growth without traffic growth
- Security audits flagging the WP attack surface
CodeIgniter to Laravel
Modernise a CodeIgniter codebase without a complete rewrite. We map controllers, models, and views to Laravel equivalents, refactor where the design needs it, and migrate data with zero loss. Typical timeline is 3 to 5 months for a medium codebase.
Common reasons clients migrate
- CodeIgniter 3 end of life, CI 4 not worth the rebuild
- Outdated codebase blocking hiring
- Need modern features (queues, real time, testing)
- Existing app cannot scale beyond a single server
Magento to Bagisto
For stores tired of Magento's hosting and licence costs. We migrate catalog, customers, orders, and SEO URLs to Bagisto (Laravel based, open source) and rebuild the storefront with a modern frontend. Typical migration runs 4 to 8 months.
Common reasons clients migrate
- Magento Commerce licence and hosting costs unsustainable
- Magento 1 end of life, Magento 2 rebuild not worth it
- Need custom commerce logic Magento cannot model
- Page speed and Core Web Vitals stuck below threshold
Legacy PHP, ASP, ColdFusion to Laravel
For enterprise applications running on technology nobody wants to maintain anymore. We use the strangler fig pattern. New Laravel runs alongside the legacy system, takes over bounded contexts one at a time, until the legacy can be retired. Typical timeline 6 to 12 months.
Common reasons clients migrate
- Original developers no longer with the company
- Hosting on end of life infrastructure
- Cannot pass modern security or compliance audits
- Business asking for features the legacy system cannot do
Everything a migration needs to land safely.
Not just the new application. We deliver the full migration toolkit that takes a legacy system off the road without losing customers, data, or rankings.
Code audit & migration plan
Full audit of the existing codebase, dependency and integration inventory, database schema review, and a detailed migration plan with timeline, risks, and rollback procedures.
New Laravel architecture
Modern Laravel architecture with ERD, module structure, and data mapping document. Reviewed with your team before any code is migrated.
Idempotent data migration scripts
Scripts that can be run safely multiple times. Rehearsed on a copy of production before the live cutover. Every record count and checksum verified.
Password hash migration
Customer accounts moved with original password hashes (WordPress phpass, Magento, bcrypt). No forced password resets, no support tickets on day one.
Complete 301 redirect plan
Every URL on the old site mapped to its new path. Redirects applied at the web server level for performance. SEO equity preserved through the cutover.
Shadow testing & cutover rehearsal
Mirror traffic from legacy to the new Laravel app to verify behaviour. Cutover rehearsed at least twice with full timing and rollback procedures before going live.
Integration re-validation
Every third party integration (payments, CRM, ERP, email, analytics) re-tested on staging with the new Laravel app before cutover. No surprises on launch day.
Post launch stabilisation sprint
Two week post launch sprint dedicated to monitoring, fixing edge cases, and confirming SEO rankings hold. Only then is the legacy system declared retired.
Named senior engineers on every migration.
Acquaint migration engagements are led by senior project managers who have actually shipped production migrations from the platforms we replace. Here is who leads our migration work.
Mayur Nandaniya
Project Manager, Migration Lead
Six steps from audit to legacy retired.
Migration plan in week one. Data scripts rehearsed twice. Strangler fig where downtime is unacceptable. The discipline shows up at cutover, not before.
Audit & Migration Plan
Code audit of the existing application, dependency and integration inventory, database schema review, and migration risk register. Output is a detailed migration plan signed off before kick off.
Laravel Architecture Design
New Laravel architecture proposal with ERD, module structure, and data mapping document. Reviewed with your team and locked before the build begins.
Build Parallel Laravel App
New Laravel application built alongside the legacy system in two week sprints with Pest tests, Larastan static analysis, and feature parity tracked sprint by sprint.
Data Migration & Rehearsal
Idempotent migration scripts written for every table. Run on a copy of production first. Cutover rehearsed at least twice with full timing and rollback procedures.
Shadow Testing & 301 Plan
Mirror traffic from legacy to the new Laravel app to verify behaviour. Map every URL to its new path. Ship a complete 301 redirect set to preserve SEO equity.
Cutover & Stabilisation
DNS switch during a low traffic window with five minute TTL. Real time monitoring through Pulse and Sentry. Two week post launch stabilisation sprint before declaring the legacy system retired.
The tools we use for production migrations.
Production tested across 100 plus migrations. Mature, supported, and audit ready.
Source platforms
Target Laravel
Data migration
Strangler fig & cutover
Testing & QA
Monitoring & rollback
A Laravel migration we shipped.
One detailed snapshot from 100 plus production migrations we have delivered. Full case studies sit in our portfolio.
Legacy CodeIgniter 3 learning platform migrated to Laravel 11 with zero data loss
"We had been scared of this migration for two years. The Acquaint team shipped it in four months with zero downtime and zero customer support tickets on cutover day. The post launch stabilisation sprint they ran caught two edge cases we never would have found ourselves."
An EdTech platform serving 40,000 plus learners across 12 countries was running on a Laravel 6 monolith fronted by a CodeIgniter 3 marketing site. Both stacks were end of life, the team could not hire developers for either, and shipping new features was taking three times longer than two years earlier. The platform also had to migrate without disrupting live exam windows, where downtime would directly impact paying customers writing certification exams.
We ran a four month migration to Laravel 11 with proper multi-tenancy through Stancl, Cashier for subscription billing, and Pennant for feature flag rollouts. Strangler fig pattern moved bounded contexts (auth, course management, exams, billing) from old to new in stages, with the marketing site staying on CodeIgniter until the last cutover. Data migration scripts were idempotent, rehearsed three times on production copies, and ran in 47 minutes during the actual cutover. Password hashes migrated cleanly, no forced resets. SEO URLs preserved through a 2,400 entry 301 redirect map. The legacy CodeIgniter site was retired four weeks after the final cutover.
Three ways to engage on a Laravel migration.
Pick the model that fits your migration scope. Most clients run Fixed Price for a defined migration, then keep a Dedicated Developer for the post launch stabilisation and feature work.
Dedicated Developer
- Full time, exclusive to your migration
- 176 hours per month per engineer
- 5 day developer replacement clause
- Direct Slack and email access
Fixed Price Migration
- Audit, architecture, build, data migration, cutover
- Project lead, developers, QA included
- Cutover rehearsals and stabilisation sprint
- Post launch handover with full docs
Time & Material
- Hourly billing, weekly invoices
- Scale team up or down on demand
- Effective rate from $18 per hour long term
- Full transparency on hours worked
Questions teams ask before starting a web app project.
Cannot find your answer here? Speak directly to our team. No sales pitch.
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What is a Laravel web application?
A Laravel web application is a server rendered or hybrid web app built using the Laravel PHP framework. It can serve interactive dashboards, multi tenant SaaS products, customer portals, internal business systems, marketplace platforms, or anything that needs structured server side logic with a polished user interface. Laravel handles routing, database access, authentication, queues, real time events, and testing out of the box, so engineering teams ship faster than writing raw PHP and end up with code that is much easier to maintain over the years.
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How long does it take to build a web application with Laravel?
A focused MVP usually ships in 6 to 10 weeks with two engineers. A mid sized business application with several modules, third party integrations, and a polished admin lands in 3 to 5 months. Enterprise web platforms with multi tenancy, compliance work, and heavy custom logic typically run 6 to 12 months. The timeline depends on feature scope, decision speed, and how complete the specification is on day one. We share a week by week estimate after the discovery call.
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What types of web apps can be built with Laravel?
Almost any server backed web product. The common types we ship are multi tenant SaaS platforms, internal business systems, customer portals, marketplace and listing platforms, content management systems, fintech and payment backends, learning platforms, healthcare and telehealth tools, real time dashboards, and APIs that power mobile apps. Laravel scales from a single founder MVP all the way to enterprise grade systems running across multiple servers.
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Is Laravel suitable for large web applications?
Yes. Laravel is used in production by FedEx, Disney Hotstar, BBC, Razorpay, and Pfizer, all of which run very large web applications. For scale, we use queue workers with Horizon, Redis caching, read replicas, horizontal scaling on Forge or Vapor, and asynchronous job processing. We have shipped Laravel platforms serving 40,000 plus concurrent users and 80,000 plus loan applications per month on a single architecture.
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Does Laravel work for real time web applications?
Absolutely. Laravel ships with native real time support through Reverb (the official WebSocket server), broadcasting events through Pusher or Ably, and Livewire 3 for reactive UI without a separate SPA. Common real time features we build include live notifications, collaborative dashboards, chat, live order tracking, and presence indicators. For deeper real time work we pair Laravel with Livewire and Alpine.js. More on our Livewire development page.
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How much does Laravel web application development cost?
A focused Laravel web app MVP starts around $12,000 to $20,000. Most mid sized business apps land between $30,000 and $90,000. Enterprise platforms with multi tenancy, compliance, and integrations typically run $80,000 to $250,000. Dedicated Laravel developers at Acquaint Softtech start at $22 per hour or $3,200 per month full time. A full breakdown sits on our Laravel development cost page.
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How do you scale a Laravel web application?
Scaling Laravel is well understood. We profile bottlenecks with Telescope and Pulse, move heavy work to queues processed by Horizon, cache aggressively with Redis, introduce read replicas for the database, and horizontally scale the application layer through Forge or Vapor. For very large workloads we add CDN caching, edge functions, and asynchronous event driven flows. We have taken Laravel applications from a 12 second cold start to sub second response times in three sprints.
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Web application vs website in Laravel, what is the difference?
A website is mostly informational with limited interactivity. A web application has logged in users, data that persists, business logic, and workflows. Both can be built with Laravel, but a web application uses Laravel's full strength (authentication, authorisation, database modelling, queues, events, real time, testing) while a website often runs on a much lighter setup. If you log in, perform actions, and the system remembers state, you are looking at a web application.
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Do you build greenfield web apps or also rebuild existing ones?
Both. Roughly 60 percent of our Laravel work is greenfield, where we take a fresh idea or specification and ship the first production version. The other 40 percent is replatform work, where we modernise legacy PHP or migrate from CodeIgniter, WordPress, or older Laravel versions. For replatform projects we maintain feature parity, run shadow testing, and cut over with zero data loss. More on our migration services page.
What teams usually pair with migration.
Migration is rarely the whole story. Most clients combine the migration with one or more of these.
Upgrade Services
Already on Laravel? Upgrade from 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10 to Laravel 12 or 13.
Custom Laravel Development
Custom features and modules built on the newly migrated Laravel codebase.
Laravel vs WordPress
Honest comparison covering when to migrate from WordPress and when to stay.
Laravel vs CodeIgniter
Comparison covering migration paths from CodeIgniter 3 and 4 to modern Laravel.
Enterprise Development
Compliance grade Laravel for regulated migrations with SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA.
Maintenance & Support
Post migration SLA tiers for monitoring, security patching, and feature iteration.
Laravel Development Cost
Pricing breakdown by project type, region, and engagement model.
All Laravel Services
Browse our full Laravel development service catalog.
India (Head Office)
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Canada
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